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THE FOUNDATIONS OF SPIRITUALISM 



The Foundations of 
Spiritualism 



A^"- 



BY 



W. WHATELY SMITH 

AUTHOB OP THE " MBCHASISM OP BDBVIT AL " 




.-r>-) 



hf^-^^^Jjlty 




NEW YORK 

E. P. BUTTON & COMPANY 

681 FIFTH AVENUE 



CoPTRIG!IT, 1920, 

By E. p. button & COMPANY 



All Rights Reserved 



g)CI,A601695 







iPtiated In the Untted States of America 



^^y 26 IS20 



^ 



CONTENTS 



PAGE 

Part I : Evidence for Survival - - 1 

Part II : The Process of Communica- 
tion ----- 89 

Part III : Conclusions ----- 115 



Digitized by tine Internet Arciiive 
in 2011 witii funding from 
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PARTI 
THE EVIDENCE FOR SURVIVAL 



THE FOUNDATIONS OF 
SPIRITUALISM 



Psychical Research has undertaken the in- 
vestigation of a very heterogeneous mass of 
facts and claims; but for the purposes of the 
present discussion the relevant phenomena can 
roughly be classified under three main heads, 
as follows: — 

(1) "Physical" phenomena; 

(2) Automatisms; 

(3) Phenomena such as Telepathy, 

Hallucinations, and Apparitions. 
It will be convenient to describe these in 
slightly greater detail before proceeding to an 
analysis of the evidence for Survival and Com- 



(i 



4 THE FOUNDATIONS OF SPIRITUALISM 

munication, with which this paper is mainly 
concerned. 

(1) Physical phenomena may be defined 
as those in which physical effects are apparent- 
ly produced in the material world by the 
agency of forces at present unrecognized by 
physical science. Many such phenomena have 
been reported from time to time, but the only 
varieties which need receive serious considera- 
tion here are Telekinetic and Parakinetic ef- 
fects, Raps, and Materializations. 

The question of photographic phenomena — 
"spirit photography" — is still, in my opinion, 
so obscure evidentially and, even if genuine, 
likely to be so remotely connected with Sur- 
vival that I do not feel called upon to deal with 
it at this juncture. 

(But cp. Hereward Carrington's Physical 

Phenomena of Spintualism,'^ pp. 206-223; 

Podmore's Modern Spiritualism, Vol. II., 117- 

125; Proc. S.P.R., VII., 268-289; and contrast 

^New York: Dodd, Mead & Co, 



THE EVIDENCE FOR SURVIVAL 5 

Henslow's Proofs of the Truths of Spiritiud- 
ism, ^ which I consider to be very weak). 

Telekinesis is the name given to movements 
of ponderable objects — in the presence of a 
"medium" — without contact between the ob- 
ject moved and any person present, or the ex- 
ercise of any of the known methods of force 
transmission. Parakinesis denotes similar phe- 
nomena in which there is contact between the 
medium (or experimenters) and the object 
moved, but not of a nature adequate to explain 
the movements observed. 

The phenomena of Raps and similar noises 
require no further description. 

In my opinion these phenomena should be 
regarded as estabhshed with a degree of proba- 
bility amounting, for all practical purposes, to 
complete certainty. 

The early experiments of the late Sir Wil- 
liam Crookes with D. D. Home in the seventies 
are probably quite reliable and many compe- 

^New York: Dodd, Mead & Co. 



6 THE FOUNDATIONS OF SPIRITUALISM 

tent and experienced observers were convinced 
that genuine phenomena of this type were pro- 
duced in the presence of Eusapia Paladino, the 
celebrated Neapolitan medium, although it was 
generally recognized that she did not hesitate 
to cheat when opportunity offered and genuine 
phenomena were not forthcoming. 

But the classical experiments which, more 
than all previous work collectively, have served 
to establish the reality of these occurrences are 
those undertaken in recent years by Dr. W. J. 
Crawford of the Belfast Municipal Technical 
Institute. For full details and comments ref- 
erence may be made to Dr. Crawford's two 
books, The Reality of Psychic Phenomena ^ 
and Eojperiments in Psychical Science ^, and 
papers by Sir William Barrett and the pres- 
ent writer in the Proceedings of the Society 
for Psychical Research (Vol. XXX., 306 
sqq.). These experiments are of the utmost 
interest from the scientific point of view, but 

^ New York: E. P. Button & Company 



THE EVIDENCE FOR SURVIVAL 7 

for reasons which will be given later, they 
have but httle relevance to the present issue. 
The same applies to the phenomena known 
as Materialization, which appears to be very 
nearly, if not quite, the weakest plank in the 
Spiritualist platform. It is, perhaps, hardly 
necessary to observe that these phenomena 
consist in the alleged appearance, in the pres- 
ence of a medium, of more or less complete 
human figures which are claimed to be those of / 

deceased persons who have, in some obscure 
fashion, contrived to "materialize" some kind 
of temporary body. Nor is it necessary to 
describe in detail the nauseating sequences of 
fraud and exposure which have characterized 
this branch of the subject. The weakness of 
the Spiritualistic claims is adequately dealt 
with in Podmore's Modern Spiritualism, Vol. 
II., 95-116 and 152-160. (Compare also 
Hereward Carrington's Physical Phenomena 
of SpijituaUsm, 230 sqq., and Proc, S,PM.s 
IV., 48 sqq.) 



8 THE FOUNDATIONS OF SPIRITUALISM 

In general it may be said that the number 
of cases in which fraud has been actually ex- 
posed are so numerous, and the cases in which 
it has not been detected have borne so close a 
resemblance to those in which it has, that no 
single historical case of full Materialization 
can be regarded as even reasonably convincing 
— not even the celebrated case of "Katie 
King," which satisfied Sir William Crookes 
and which is dealt with by Mr Podmore in the 
second of the two passages referred to above. 

Nor is this conclusion affected by the fre- 
quent alleged recognition of the "materialized" 
entity as a friend or relation by one of those 
present. (Cp. Proc. S.P.R., XXI., 470 and 
505-508.) Even "M.A. Oxon" (the late 
Revd. Stainton Moses), an ardent Spiritualist, 
said speaking of "spirit photographs" : "Some 
people would recognize anything. A broom 
and a sheet are quite enough for some wild en- 
thusiasts who go with the figure in their eye, 
and see what they wish to see. . . ." 



THE EVIDENCE FOR SURVIVAL 9 

But in spite of all this there seem to be indi- 
cations here and there which suggest that there 
may have been a nucleus of genuine phenomena 
round which the fraudulent imitations and 
extrapolations gathered. Experience suggests 
that this is not infrequently the case. A feeble 
and fugitive genuine phenomena is seized upon 
by fraudulent mediums, imitated and enlarged, 
and finally exposed, with the result that the less 
ambitious original is unjustly discredited. 

That this may be so in the particular case 
under consideration is strongly suggested by 
the recent experiments of Mme. Bisson, 
Schrenck-Notzing, and Geley with the medium 
known as "Eva C" alias Marthe Beraud. 
These experiments, conducted with a rigidity 
of control never before attempted in a case of 
this kind, indicate that some peculiar, quasi- 
material and amorphous substance is almost 
certainly extruded from the body of the en- 
tranced medium. The forms — heads, hands, 
etc. — which it subsequently appears to assume 



10 THE FOUNDATIONS OF SPIRITUALISM 

should in my judgment be regarded with more 
suspicion at the present stage of the enquiry 
in spite of the rigorous experimental conditions 
and of the fact that MM. Schrenck-Notzing 
and Geley are completely satisfied as to their 
genuineness. 

A very able critical summary of the case is 
given by Miss Helen de G. Verrall (Mrs. 
Salter) in Proc. S.P.R., Vol. XXVII., and 
the phenomena are described in detail in Mme. 
Bisson's book, Les Phenomenes dits de Mate- 
rialisation (Felix Alcan, Paris) and in 
Schrenck-Notzing's Matericdisation-sphdnom' 
ene} 

Both these works, especially the latter, are 
copiously illustrated by photographs of the 
phenomena which establish their objectivity be- 
yond any possibility of doubt, although they 

^ An English translation of this book by Dr. Fournier 
d'Albe will be published by Messrs. Kegan Paul, Trench, 
Trubner & Co., Ld., at an early date, and an American 
edition of the same by Messrs. E. P. Dutton & Co., of 
New York. 



THE EVIDENCE f'OR SURVIVAL 11 

do not, of course, settle the more complex 
questions of their genuineness or their ultimate 
origin. 

But it is not necessary to discuss these highly 
obscure manifestations in any great detail. 
Even if they ultimately prove to have a gen- 
uine foundation they are of comparatively 
minor significance for the present issue. 

Even if a truly recognizable figure of a de- 
ceased person were to be "materialized," it 
would not of itself throw any appreciable light 
on the problem of survival. Geley and 
Schrenck-Notzing appear to be of the opinion 
that the form assumed by the extruded sub- 
stance is primarily determined by the medium's 
contemporary dream-state, and indeed some 
such supposition seems to be inevitable in order 
to explain certain observed anomalies, if we 
are to consider the phenomena as genuine at all. 
But the medium's contemporary dream-state 
may itself be determined by a variety of causes 
including, probably, telepathic impressions, 



12 THE FOUNDATIONS OF SPIRITUALISM 

and might thus well contain a visualized im- 
pression of a deceased person derived from the 
mind, conscious or sub-conscious, of one of the 
experimenters present. 

I feel, therefore, that, in spite of the stress 
laid on Materializations by a few Spii'itualistic 
writers, I am entitled to ignore them in the 
present discussion on the grounds both of their 
insufficient credentials and of their irrelevance 
to the issue. 

(2) I now pass to the second main class of 
phenomena classified under the general name 
of "Automatisms." This class is by far the 
most important of the three, and its principal 
aspects will be fully analyzed at a later stage. 

It includes all cases in which intelligent com- 
munications are obtained, from mediumistic or 
quasi-mediumistic sources, which are not in- 
itiated by the conscious mind of the person or 
persons physically responsible for their pro- 
duction. The commonest examples are auto- 



THE EVIDENCE FOR SURVIVAL 13 

matic writing, trance-speaking, planchitte, the 
"ouija board," the "glass and letters game," 
and the messages laboriously spelled out by 
"table-turning" or by raps. These phenomena 
are too well-known to need further description 
here. The messages so obtained — especially 
from the first two varieties — form by far the 
most important part, both in quantity and in 
quality, of the experimental evidence adduced 
in favor of Survival. 

(3) This class, which includes such phenom- 
ena as Telepathy and Apparitions, is again 
comparatively unimportant so far as any posi- 
tive light which it throws on the problem of 
Survival is concerned, although the possibilities 
of Telepathy are, as will be seen later, of the 
first importance in providing an alternative 
hypothesis to the spiritualistic explanation. 
In view of this, it is relevant to describe briefly 
the evidence on which the belief in Telepathy 
rests. 



14, THE FOUNDATIONS OF SPIRITUALISM 

Telepathy has been defined as "the com- 
munication of impressions of any sort from one 
mind to another, independently of the recog- 
nized channels of sense (Barrett, Psychical 
Research, ^ p. 68). The evidence for it falls 
naturally into two main groups, namely ex- 
perimental and spontaneous. 

In the former, one of the experimenters, 
commonly known as the "agent," concentrates 
his attention on a diagram (cp. Proc. S.PM.j 
I., 264 sqq. and II., 24 sqq.), a number {Proc. 
S.P.R., VI, 128-170), a playing-card drawn 
from a pack (Proc. S.P.R,, VIII., 427-8), a 
color {ibid.), an idea or mental picture (many 
cases), an object {Proc. S.P.R., VIII., 423-5 
and XXVII., 415 sqq.), or a word, while the 
other experimenter — the "percipient" — who 
is sometimes hypnotized, records the impres- 
sion which comes into his mind. Experiments 
have also been performed in the transference 
of such sensations as tastes {Phantasms of the 

» New York: Henry Holt & Co. 



^ 



THE EVIDENCE FOR SURVIVAL 15 

Living,^ Abridged Edn., 43-9) and pains 
(ibid. 48) and of volitional impulses (Proc. 
S.P.R., VIII., 577-93). 

In the second group we find cases where 
thoughts occupying the mind of one person 
obtrude themselves into the dreams of another 
{Phantasms of the Living, Abridged Edn., 
221-226), or where a person receives a more 
or less vivid and definite impression of some 
crisis in the life of a friend or relative for which 
none of the ordinary means of acquiring infor- 
mation will account {ibid., many cases). 

Instances of both these types of evidence 
are so numerous that it is impossible to give 
here even the references to them in full. The 
early volumes of the Proceedings of the S.P.R. 
abound in reports on the subject and later ac- 
counts will be found in Vols. XXI., 60-94, 
XXVII., 279 sqq. and 415 sqq., and XXIX., 
306 sqq. 

The evidence of the second type is dealt 

^ New York: E. P. Dutton. & Company. 



16 THE FOUNDATIONS OF SPIRITUALISM 

with exhaustively in Phantasms of the Liv- 
ing by Gurney, Myers, and Podmore, of 
which an abridged edition was published by 
Messrs. Kegan Paul in 1918. Adequate sum- 
maries of both types are to be found in Myers' 
Human Personality, ^ in Baggally's Telepathy 
Genuine and Fraudulent^, in Sir Oliver 
Lodge's Survival of Man,^ or in any other 
standard work on the subject. It is moreover 
unlikely that any one will seriously question 
the existence of Telepathy as a '"vera causa" 
and I do not think it necessary to go further 
into its credentials here. In any event I think 
it will soon become apparent, as the analysis 
of the evidence proceeds, that it is quite impos- 
sible to evade the spiritualistic explanation ex- 
cept by assuming, inter alia, a very large meas- 
ure of telepathic activity on the part of the 
automatists and other persons concerned. 
But the acceptance of Telepathy as a fact 

^ New York: Longman's Green Co. 
2 New York: G. H. Doran Co. 



THE EVIDENCE FOR SURVIVAL 17 

has a certain direct evidential bearing on the 
question of Survival. 

In the first place it is argued that the abiHty 
of one mind to communicate with another inde- 
pendently of the usual sensory and motor 
mechanism of the body — and indeed by any 
physical mechanism at all — renders it distinct- 
ly more likely that a mind can eodst indepen- 
dently of the body. If the Universe provides, 
so to speak, for extra-physical processes of this 
kind, it seems not unlikely that it may also 
provide a similarly transcendental habitat for 
the minds responsible for such processes. 

The force of this argument clearly depends 
entirely on the validity of the assumption that 
the telepathic process is not only non-sensory 
but also non-physical. That such is the case 
is indicated by two main considerations. First, 
the telepathic process does not seem to obey 
the law of Inverse Squares. That is to say 
the intensity of the impression transmitted does 
not seem to diminish, as the distance between 



18 THE FOUNDATIONS OF SPIRITUALISM 

agent and precipient is increased, in the way 
we should confidently expect if it were trans- 
mitted by means of any disturbance in the ether 
analogous to the transmission of light or the 
waves employed in wireless telegraphy. Sec- 
ond, there is some reason to suppose that a 
telepathic impression is transmitted en hloc, 
as a simultaneity, and not as a succession of 
stimuli to be synthesized by the recipient, as 
is the case in all forms of direct or indirect sen- 
sory communication of thoughts. The most 
obvious example of the latter process is that 
of writing and, a fortiori, telegraphy by Morse 
or similar code. But speech, too, not only con- 
sists of a succession of articulated sounds but 
each of these sounds itself consists of a series 
of vibrations in the air. 

I do not suggest that these considerations 
are in any way conclusive in showing that the 
telepathic process is something essentially non- 
physical; but they strongly suggest that such 
is the case, and the argument in favor of the 



THE EVIDENCE FOR SURVIVAL 19 

possibility of Survival derived therefrom must 
accordingly be allowed some weight. 

On the other hand Telepathy enormously 
increases our chances of evading the prima 
facie implications of the evidence on which the 
spiritistic explanation is based. 

I do not propose to give any discussion here 
of the evidence for Survival afforded by "Ap- 
paritions" or "Phantasms of the Dead." 
These are fully discussed in Proc. S,P.R., VI., 
13-35, 229-313, 314-357, and VIII., 170 sqq., 
and in Myers' Human Personality, Vol. II., 
chap. VII. 

My chief reason for this omission is that 
Spiritualists do not in general rely on these 
phenomena to support their doctrines of whose 
scientific foundation this paper is primarily a 
critique. In spite of this the omission would 
not be justifiable if these phenomena were in- 
trinsically of high evidential value ; but, partly 
on account of their sporadic and fugitive na- 
ture, which makes experimental treatment and 



i 



so THE FOUNDATIONS OF SPIRITUALISM 

close study impracticable, and partly because 
of the difficulty of excluding Hallucinations 
and immediate or deferred Telepathy, I con- 
sider them to be of no more than secondary 
importance from the evidential point of view. 



II 

I shall ROW proceed briefly to indicate the 
kind of evidence which would be necessary to 
establish Survival, with reasonable certainty, 
on experimental grounds. 

It may be pointed out, in passing, that 
Survival of bodily death is not synonymous 
with Immortality, and that to "prove" the 
former would not necessarily prove the latter, 
although it would greatly increase the chances 
in its favor. 

In order to establish Survival it is necessary 
to show that some individual personality has 
undergone the process of death and has yet 
remained sufficiently intact to warrant its being 
described as the same individual. It is not per- 
haps possible to exclude from among the vari- 
ous a priori possibilities that of a personality 

21 



22 THE FOUNDATIONS OF SPIRITUALISM 

surviving death, in a sense, but being so greatly 
modified in the process as no longer to be 
recognizable as an individual — even by itself. 
But there is no need to follow this ramification 
of the subject here. 

For our present purpose I need only observe 
that, in the process of satisfying ourselves that 
any evidential matter emanates from a given 
discarnate human intelligence, three stages 
would be logically distinguishable. First, we 
should have to show that the responsible in- 
telhgence is not that of the person through 
whose bodily mechanism the evidence in ques- 
tion is obtained; second, that it is discarnate, 
i.e. not that of any person living; third, that 
it is not only a discarnate intelligence but that 
particular discarnate intelligence which it pur- 
ports to be. The last step would be the easiest 
although we cannot a priori exclude the pos- 
sibility of impersonation by discarnate intelli- 
gences which might be either human or even 
non-human. 



THE EVIDENCE FOR SURVIVAL 23 

I think it is clear from the foregoing that 
the problem reduces itself to one of showing 
individual personal identity and that no phe- 
nomena, however remarkable they may be in- 
trinsically, are of any direct value in establish- 
ing Survival unless they bear on this point, 
although they may, of course, be of indirect 
value in disclosing previously unsuspected 
properties in the Universe and so increasing 
the a priori chances for there being some pro- 
vision in it for discarnate existence. 

My reasons for dismissing "physical phe- 
nomena" so briefly will now be apparent. The 
fact that, e.g., a table moves in a manner inex- 
plicable on normal grounds is no proof that a 
"spirit" moves it; even if it moves intelligently 
it does not follow that the intelligence is dis- 
carnate — for it may be, and very likely is, some 
form of secondary intelligence of the medium 
which is responsible; and even if it could be 
shown, w^hich would be difficult, that the re- 
sponsible intelligence were discarnate, it might 



24 THE FOUNDATIONS OF SPIRITUALISM 

still be non-human. Moreover, as pointed out 
above, even if, as an extreme case, we could 
suppose that the production of an unmistake- 
ably recognizable "materialized" form were in- 
controvertibly established, Survival would not 
be a logically necessary inference from the fact. 
It is hardly necessary, I hope, to point out that 
matter purporting to describe the next life is 
in no way evidential. Whether it agrees or 
conflicts with our preconceived ideas it is 
equally insusceptible of experimental verifica- 
tion and equally open to the suspicion of hav- 
ing arisen only in some region of the auto- 
matist's own mind. The same applies to 
didactic and doctrinal matter, however ortho- 
dox or heretical it may be. 

There is one phenomenon of "mixed" na- 
ture — partly "physical" and partly automatic 
— ^which calls for comment here. I refer to 
what is known as the "Direct Voice." 

It is claimed that in the presence of certain 
mediums — of whom the best known is Mrs, 



THE EVIDENCE FOR SURVIVAL 25 

Wriedt— a voice is heard which is not that of 
the medium or of any person present. This 
voice purports to be under the control of dis- 
carnate persons and gives messages, etc., to 
those present. I am not prepared to give a 
definite opinion as to the genuineness of this 
phenomenon— personally I regard it as dis- 
tinctly dubious; but, even if it is genuine, its 
evidential import is to be found solely in the 
content of the messages received and not in the 
mechanism of their delivery. So far as I am 
aware, no evidential matter has been obtained 
from this source which cannot be paralleled in 
the more familiar records of trance-speaking 
and automatic writing. 

There is therefore no need to deal with this 
phenomenon separately here. 



Ill 

Having thus cleared the ground, we can pro- 
ceed to the analysis of the diiFerent types of 
evidence which have been adduced as afford- 
ing proof of personal identity. 

The manner of obtaining them need not con- 
cern us; it is normally through writing or 
speaking by a medium or, to use a better word, 
an "automatist," who may, or may not, be in 
a state of trance. 

These varieties of evidential matter can, I 
think, legitimately be classified under five 
heads, in an ascending order of evidential 
value. I shall deal with these five varieties in 
order and shall give, for each variety, a sum- 
mary of one or more actual examples and at 
least general references to other instances. 

(1) Cases where details concerning the 
ostensible communicator are given which are 

26 



THE EVIDENCE FOR SURVIVAL 27 

known to the student or enquirer but wnknown 
to the automatist. 

Such details will in general consist of names, 
dates, relationships, personal characteristics, 
anecdotes, etc., and it may be noticed, in pass- 
ing, that the evidential value of such details 
will be greater if they are of so trivial a nature 
as to make it unlikely that they would be 
known to more than a very limited circle. 

As will be seen later, this variety of evidence 
is not cogent and as it is very abundant I do 
not think it is necessary to give much in the 
way of illustration of it. Examples of the sort 
of thing referred to, taken at random from the 
first books to hand, are as follows: — 

(A) Mr. J. Ai-thur Hill writing of his ex- 
periences with Mr. Wilkinson, a well-known 
North-of-England medium, says: 

"At my first sitting with him he described 
and named my mother and other relatives, 
whom he saw apparently with me. I had no 
reason to believe that he had any normal knowl- 



28 THE FOUNDATIONS OF SPIRITUALISM 

edge of these people; certainly I had never 
mentioned them to him, and it was in the last 
degree unlikely that any one else had. My 
mother had been dead twenty-two years and 
was not at all a prominent person. Moreover 
he got by automatic writing a signed message 
from her, giving the name of the house in 
which we lived at the time of her death but 
which we had left eleven years later. This 
seemed to be given by way of a test. At later 
sittings my father and other relatives mani- 
fested, with names and identifying detail. . . . 
The evidence went beyond any possibility of 
the medium's normal knowledge, and was 
characteristic of the different communicators 
in all sorts of subtle ways," (Psychical Mis- 
cellanea, p. 46.) 

(B) Hodgson {Proc. S.P.R., XIII., 373) 
says: "... a club friend of my own called 
Otis made several brief communications at 
sittings. I asked him for a test, and he replied 
by reminding me of the *sword dance.' . . . He 



THE EVIDENCE FOR SURVIVAL 29 

was my vis-d-vis in a sword dance given by 
ourselves and six other members of the club in 
connection with some Christmas festivities." 

(C) Sir Oliver Lodge in his Survival of 
Man, pp. 181-2, describes how, in the course of 
one of his sittings with JMrs. Piper, he pre- 
sented to her an old gold watch which he had 
received that morning by post from an uncle. 
Another — deceased — uncle to whom the watch 
had previously belonged purported to com- 
municate and gave his name — "Uncle Jerry" 
— correctly. Sir Oliver continues : 

" 'Uncle Jerry' recalled episodes such as 
swimming the creek when they, the communi- 
cator and his twin brother, were boys together, 
and running some risk of getting drowned; 
kilhng a cat in Smith's field ; the possession of 
a small rifle and of a long peculiar skin, like a 
snake skin. . . ." ( For full account of sitting 
see Proc. S.P.R., Vol. VI., 503 sqq.) 

Many instances of this general type occur 
in the same volume, and in Volume XIII., 



so THE FOUNDATIONS OF SPIRITUALISM 

284-582, which describes the very well-known 
"George Pelham" case. The latest example, 
and in some respects one of the best with 
which I am acquainted, is to be found in 
Proc. S.P.R., XXX., 339-554 (i.e. Part 
LXXVIII., On a Series of Sittings with Mrs. 
Osborne Leonard by Miss Radclyff e-Hall and 
(Una) Lady Troubridge). 

But it is not necessary for me to multiply 
instances of this variety of evidential matter. 
No one with the most rudimentary knowledge 
of the subject will deny that such material has 
been obtained in very great abundance. Its 
comparative unimportance will be dealt with 
later. 

(2) Cases where details concerning the 
ostensible communicator are given which are 
not known either to the automatist or to any 
other person present. 

Examples: — (A) "The pearl tie-pin casef* 
This is given by Sir William Barrett in his 



THE EVIDENCE FOR SURVIVAL SI 

book On the Threshold of the Unseerij^ pp. 
184-5. The ostensible communicator, killed 
during the war, asked that his pearl tie-pin 
should be sent to his fiancee, whose name he 
gave. The engagement, subsequently verified, 
had been kept a secret and this was the first 
that his family or friends had heard of it. 

(B) From Mr. A. J. Arthur Hill's Psij- 
chical Investigations, p. 19. The medium says : 
". . . Mr. Leather has brought Elias Sydney. 
. . . Sidney has been passed away longer than 
^Ir Leather." Mr. Hill had never heard of 
Elias Sydney and had some difficulty in tracing 
him; but he was finally identified as a close 
friend of the Mr. Leather referred to. 

(C) The "Group Photograph" incident^ 
given by Sir Oliver Lodge in Raymond " and 
in Proc. S.P.R., XXIX., 132 sqq. In this case 
reference was made by the ostensible communi- 

^New York: E. P. Button & Company. 
2 New York: G. H. Doran Co. 



32 THE FOUNDATIONS OF SPIRITUALISM 

cator (Raymond Lodge) to a photograph of 
himself and brother-officers which was not 
known, at that time, to any one present. 
Identifying details were given and subsequent- 
ly verified on receipt of the photograph/ 

(D) Several exceptionally good cases (ob- 
tained in this instance through "table-turning" 
— a form of automatism — ) are quoted by Dr. 
Paul Joire {Psychical and Supernormal Phe- 
nomena,^ pp. 221-247) from the Bulletin of 
the Societe d'Etudes Psychiques de Nancy, by 
which body they were obtained. 

In these cases various ostensible communi- 
cators gave details of their profession, date of 
birth and of death, places of residence and 
other details, which were duly verified by the 
experimenters. 

^ This is one of the very few items of actual evidence 
given in Raymond. Thousands of people^ I suppose, 
have derived their entire knowledge of the subject from 
this book and imagine that it contains the latest and 
most cogent evidence obtainable. This is a complete 
misapprehension. 

2 New York: F. A. Stokes Co. 



THE EVIDENCE FOR SURVIVAL 33 

For these examples I have no credentials 
beyond the imprimatur of Dr. Joire, who, 
however, is a responsible authority. 

(E) Sir Oliver Lodge gives a "List of In- 
cidents unknown to or forgotten by, or un- 
knowable to, persons present" which were re- 
ferred to in the course of his observations of 
Mrs. Piper's trance. {Proc. S.P.R., VI., 649- 
650.) 

For other instances see the many papers on 
the Piper case in the Proceedings of the So- 
ciety, or Mr. J. Arthur Hill's Psychical Inves- 
tigations and New Evidences in Psychical Re- 
search. 

Classical cases are: — 

(1) The "Abraham Florentine" case. 
(Proc. S.P.R., XL For criticisms 
cp. Podmore's Studies in Psychical 
Research, 125-33.) 
'(2) The "Blanche Abercromby" case. 
(Myers' Human Personality j II., 
281-4.) 



34 THE FOUNDATIONS OF SPIRITUALISM 

(3) The "Brainerd" case. (Ibid., II., 

457-8.) 

(4) The "Gurwood" case. {Ibid.. II., 

162-7.) 
(N.B. — I do not regard the credentials of 
the first two cases as wholly satisfactory.) 

Cp. also Sir William Barrett's On the 
Threshold of the Unseen, pp. 226- 
341, and Hill's Psychical Investiga- 
tions, p. 172. For criticisms of these 
see Immortality, 251 and 252, and 
for Mr. Hill's reply see Psychical 
Miscellanea, 28-29. 
Cp. also Proc. S.P.R., XXX., 487-546. 
(3) Cases in which details concerning the 
ostensible communicator are given which are 
unknown to any person living but which are 
subsequently verified. 

Cases such as these are ohviously bound to 
be very rare. I am acquainted with only very 
few examples — none of which strike me as 
altogether satisfactory. 



THE EVIDENCE FOR SURVIVAL 35 

(A) The first of these is an incident from 
the life of Swedenborg. It is described as fol- 
lows in Myers' Human Personality, p. 569 : — 

"The widow of the Dutch Ambassador at 
Stockholm was called upon by a goldsmith to 
pay for a siFver service which her husband had 
purchased. She beheved that it had been paid 
for but could not find the receipt ; so she begged 
Swedenborg to ask her husband where it was. 
(N.B. Swedenborg believed that he had the 
power of communicating with deceased per- 
sons. W.W.S.) Three days later he came 
to her house and informed her in the presence 
of some visitors that he had conversed with her 
husband, and had learnt from him that the debt 
had been paid and that the receipt was in a 
bureau in an upstairs room. The spirit had 
said that on pulling out the left hand drawer a 
board would appear, and on drawing this out a 
secret compartment would be disclosed, con- 
taining his private Dutch correspondence and 
the receipt. The whole company went upstairs 



36 THE FOUNDATIONS OF SPIRITUALISM 

and the papers were found, as described, in 
the secret compartment of which no one had 
known before." 

(B) Another case is one given by Dr. Paul 
Joire {Psychical and Supernormal Phenom- 
enaj chap. XIX) , and concerns the disappear- 
ance of a young Danish Doctor whilst walking 
in the neighborhood of Aix-les-Bains. It was 
ascertained that he had been proposing to visit 
a notoriously dangerous mountain in the neigh- 
borhood, and it was therefore supposed that he 
had been the victim of an accident, but in spite 
of prolonged searching no trace of his body 
could be found. 

Communications were received, through pri- 
vate mediumship, to the effect that he died on 
a perpendicular precipice of the Revard (local 
mountain), under an over-hanging rock near 
a house used as a shelter for sheep when over- 
taken by storms. Other details were also given. 
A special search of the slopes of the Revard 
was undertaken in consequence of this but 



THE EVIDENCE FOR SURVIVAL 37 

without effect, and bad weather prevented its 
completion at the time. 

The body was, however, found in the follow-* 
ing spring by the owner of a property on the 
Revard who had occasion to visit a particularly 
inaccessible part thereof which was normally 
never visited either by tourists or huntsmen. 
The surroundings corresponded closely with 
those described in the mediumistic communica- 
tions. On the whole this seems quite a good 
case and its credentials appear to be excellent. 

(4) "Cross-correspondence." Cases in 
which a message is received partly through 
one automatist and partly through another; 
or where references are made by the same 
ostensible communicator, through two or more 
automatists, to the same unurSual or character- 
istic topics. 

In its simplest form this type of evidence 
does not do more than indicate the existence 
of some single intelligence dominating both 
or all the automatists. It does not afford evi- 



38 THE FOUNDATIONS OF SPIRITUALISM 

dence of personal identity unless the selection 
and method of treatment of the subjects of the 
correspondence is characteristic of the; .sup- 
posed communicator. But this, as will be seen, 
is not infrequently the case. 

A very large proportion of the work of the 
Society for Psychical Research in recent years 
has been devoted to the study of such cross- 
correspondences and the volumes of the Pro- 
ceedings are full of discussions and analyses 
of cases of the kind, the majority of which 
emanate from the group of ostensible com- 
municators which includes the late F. W. H. 
Myers, Professor Henry Sidgwick, and Pro- 
fessor Verrall. 

The mere fact that this type of evidence, 
which was foreshadowed by Myers during his 
life, should have been so gi*eatly developed 
after his death is in itself of some evidential 
value. It clearly suggests that Myers and his 
colleagues are deliberately trying, in the light 
of their great experience of Psychical Research 



THE EVIDENCE FOR SURVIVAL 39 

while on earth, to devise new and unexception- 
able methods of proof. The study of such cases 
has been systematized and brought to a high 
pitch of technical perfection by members of 
the Society. Detailed records of the "script" 
of various automatists have been kept and the 
necessary precautions have been taken to en- 
sure that the latter do not see each other's pro- 
ductions. 

The subject-matter commonly consists of 
comparatively recondite classical and literary 
allusions and an adequate description of the 
better cases would occupy far more space than 
is at my disposal here. 

The following observations are transcribed 
from Miss Alice Johnson's study of the sub- 
ject. {Proc. S.P.R., XXI., 373-5) : 

"This (tendency to cross-correspondence) 
was shown first in iSlrs. Verrall's script, and 
a considerable section of her report on it {Proc. 
S.P.R.J XX) is devoted to an account of the 
cross-correspondences between her script and 



40 THE FOUNDATIONS OF SPIRITUALISM 

the script or automatic speech of other auto- 
matists. One the first of these, in May, 1901, 
was with Mrs. Thompson (cp. cit., pp. 207-9), 
and a striking case occurred with Mrs. Piper 
(pp. 213-17) ; hut the most important were the 
long series with Mrs. Forbes, dating from Feb- 
ruary, 1901, onwards. In this account Mrs. 
Verrall includes under the common term of 
'Cross-correspondence' cases where one autom- 
atist describes correctly some fact about the 
other, and those where references to the same 
topic occur independently in the two scripts; 
but a considerable proportion of the cases are 
of the latter type to which I think it more con- 
venient to restrict the term. 

"In studying these in proof in the early part 
of 1906, I was struck by the fact that in some 
of the most remarkable instances the state- 
ments in the script of one writer were by no 
means a simple reproduction of statements in 
the script of the other, but seemed to represent 
different aspects of the same idea, one supple- 



THE EVIDENCE FOR SURVIVAL 4i 

meriting or completing the other. Thus, in one 
case (p. 223) Mrs. Forbes's script, purporting 
to come from her son Talbot, stated that he 
must now leave her, since he was looking for a 
sensitive who wrote automatically, in order that 
he might obtain corroboration of her own writ- 
ing. Mrs. Verrall, on the same day, wrote of 
a fir-tree planted in a garden, and the script 
was signed with a sword and suspended bugle. 
The latter was part of the badge of the regi- 
ment to which Talbot Forbes had belonged, 
and Mrs. Forbes had in her garden some fir- 
trees grown from seed sent to her by her son. 
These facts were unknown to Mrs. Verrall. 

'Tn another case (pp. 241-245)— too com- 
plicated to summarize here— Mrs. Forbes pro- 
duced, on November 26th and 27th, 1902, ref- 
erences, absolutely meaningless to herself, to a 
passage in the Sympomum which Mrs. Verrall 
had been reading on those days. These ref- 
erences also applied appropriately to an ob- 
scure sentence in ]Mrs. Verrall's own script of 



42 THE FOUNDATIONS OF SPIRITUALISM 

November 26th, and on December 18th at- 
tempts were made in Mrs. Forbes's script to 
give a certain test word 'Dion' or 'Dy,' which 

it was stated, 'will be found in Myers' own ' 

Mrs. Verrall interpreted the test word at the 
time, for reasons given, as 'Diotima,' and a de- 
scription of the same part of the Symposium, 
including the mention of Diotima, did occur in 
Human Personality, which was published 
about three months later in February, 1903. 
Further references to the Symposium ap- 
peared in Mrs. Forbes's script in the early part 
of 1903 (see Mrs. Verrall's Report, p. 

246). . . . 

"I became convinced through the study of 
these cases that there was some special purpose 
in the particular form they took— all the more 
because in Mrs. Verrall's script statements 
were often associated with them, apparently to 
draw attention to some peculiar kind of test — 
described, e.g. as superposing certain things on 
others, when all would be clear. 



THE EVIDENCE FOR SURVIVAL 43 

"The characteristic of these cases, or at least 
of some of them, is that we do not get in the 
writing of one automatist anything like a me- 
chanical verbatim reproduction of phrases in 
the other ; we do not even get the same idea ex- 
pressed in different ways — as might well re- 
sult from dii-ect telepathy between them. 
What we get is a fragmentary utterance in 
one script, which seems to have no particular 
point or meaning, and another fragmentary 
utterance in the other, of an equally pointless 
character ; but, when we put the two together, 
we see that they supplement one another, and 
that there is apparently one coherent idea un- 
derlying both, but only partially expressed in 
each." 

Of specific instances the following examples 
must suffice: — 

(A) The "spear-sphere" incident. Hodg- 
son in America suggested to Mrs. Piper's "con- 
trol" that he should appear to Miss Verrall, in 
England, holding a spear in his hand. The 



44 THE FOUNDATIONS OF SPIRITUALISM 

word was at first misunderstood as sphere. 
Some days later the control reported that the 
experiment had been successfully performed. 
Meanwhile, and of course without knowing 
what had taken place in America, Mrs. Ver- 
rall wrote automatically the words, ''Panopti- 
con (TipaLpds drtrdXXet avvdeyiia imvstlkov. Tt 
ovx eStSws; volatile ferrum — pro telo impinget." 
This script contains clear references to the 
ideas of both spear and sphere. 

An adequate summary is given in Barrett's 
Psychical Research, pp. 234-5, and the case is 
reported in full in Proc. S.P.R., XX, 213-217. 

(B) Miss Verrall summarizes another case 
of true Cross-correspondence with admirable 
conciseness as follows {Proc. S.P.R., 
XXVII, 272) : 

"In the H.V. script of January 25th, 1911, 
we find a quotation from The White Ship, a 
quotation from Ariel's Song, a reference to a 
gate, and a quotation from the first chorus of 



THE EVIDENCE FOR SURVIVAL 45 

Atalanta in Calydon; in the 'Mac' ^ script of 
July 8th, 1911, there is a reference to a gate 
combined with a quotation from The Tri- 
umph of Time, afterwards associated in the 
H.V. script with the quotation from The 
White Ship; in the 'Mac' script of July 9th, 
1911, there is a reference to a gate combined 
with an allusion to the first chorus of Atalanta 
in Calydon; in the 'Mac' script of Sept. 6th, 
1911, there is a reference to a gate combined 
with a quotation from Ariel's Song." It should 
be noted that in the "Mac" script of July 8th, 
1911, it is distinctly claimed that a cross-cor- 
respondence is being attempted. 

(C) The "Ave Roma Immortalis" case. 
This, which is one of a number of inter-con- 
nected cases, is difficult to summarize adequate- 
ly in a few words. 

Mrs. Verrall's script of March 2nd, 4th and 

^ "Mac" is the nom-de-plume of one of the automatists 
whose script is studied by the Society. W. W. S. 



46 THE FOUNDATIONS OF SPIRITUALISM 

5th, 1906, contained references to the follow- 
ing ideas : 

(a) Weak defenders of a city against an 

invading host. 

(b) "Primus inter pares." 

(c) A brother related in feeling though 

not in blood. 

(d) Pagan and Pope. 

(e) The key-bearer (or club-bearer). 
There was also a definite assurance that an 
elucidating reference would be made through 
another automatist. 

This was forthcoming in the phrase "Ave 
Roma Immortalis" which appeared in the 
script of Mrs. Holland on March 7th. That it 
was the expected phrase was indicated by the 
immediately following words, "How could I 
make it any clearer without giving her the 
clew?" 

These references, unintelligible in them- 
selves, are made coherent if they are taken to 
refer to Raphael's picture, in the Stanza 



THE EVIDENCE FOR SURVIVAL 47 

d'Eliodoro in the Vatican, of Atilla terrified by 
the vision of SS. Peter and Paul when meeting 
Pope Leo who went out to save Rome. {Proc, 
S.PM„ XXI, 297-303, etc., and XXVII, 11- 
24.) This case strongly suggests that there 
was a single intelligence trying to devise a 
cross-correspondence in which the key to the, 
otherwise meaningless, script of one automatist 
is given in the script of the other. 

It is, perhaps, easy to evade a given case of 
this kind of thing by evoking the potentialities 
of coincidence and of parallel trains of thought 
in the mmds of the two automatists. But this 
becomes increasingly difficult as the corres- 
pondences detected multiply in number and in- 
crease in complexity. 

Some twenty-three examples are discussed 
by Mr. Piddington in Proc. S.P.R., Vol. 
XXII, alone, and many other instances are 
to be found in the records of recent years. 

(5) Literary puzzles, etc. Cases in which, 
by means of more or less recondite allusions. 



48 THE FOUNDATIONS OF SPIRITUALISM 

a literary puzzle is propounded^ or a piece of 
literary criticism is given or referred to or im- 
plied^ which is manifestly outside the range of 
the automatisfs normal abilities but of a nature 
especially characteristic of the supposed com- 
municator. 

Mr. Gerald Balfour, in discussing one ex- 
ample, gives the following description which is 
applicable to all cases of the class. 

"The method is to propound a literary prob- 
lem the construction and solution of which are 
outside the range of the automatisfs normal 
knowledge. The solution is at first kept pur- 
posely obscure, and it is left to the industry 
of the interpreters of the script to discover it. 
When they have failed to do so after ample 
time given additional indications are doled out 
in successive scripts until at last the riddle is 
read." 

Two examples of this type of case may be 
noted here. The accounts given are necessarily 
very condensed as the cases are highly complex. 



THE EVIDENCE FOR SURVIVAL 4,9 

(A) The ''Statins'' case. {Proc. S.P.R., 
XXVII, 221-49). 

The automatist's script contained the follow- 
ing sentences or allusions which were supposed 
to emanate from the late Dr. VeiTall: 

(1) A timid traveler confronted with a 

stream which he hestiates to try to 
cross. 

(2) Some — unspecified — passage in a 

book where this idea occurs. 

(3) "What the passage does not say I 

draw from my own mind to make 
the connection clear." 

(4) Hair in a Temple. 

(5) "A man who drove two horses in a 

less ambitious manner." 

(6) "Does God exact day -labor, light de- 

nied?" 

(7) Dante. 

The first was the central idea on which most 
emphasis was laid. The last-named, which was 
also the last in point of time, gave the clew 



50 THE FOUNDATIONS OF SPIRITUALISM 

which enabled the students of the script to 
identify the passage referred to. This was 
thought to occur in an essay by Dr. Verrall, 
pubhshed with others in 1913, which dealt with 
a passage in Dante's Divina Commedia con- 
cerning the poet Statins. 

I cannot here go into all the details which 
arise in connection wtih the scripts and this 
Essay. The point is that Dr. Verrall main- 
tained that the words used by Dante about the 
conversion of Statins to Christianity "imply an 
antithesis or comparison between Statins and 
the Greeks of the poem (the Thebaid of 
Statins), between the "rivers" to which they 
came and that to which he came, the river, ac- 
cording to the familiar figure, of baptism. This 
river he long hesitates to pass; he "halted on 
the other side," as a man, who was no hero, 
might, when to be baptized was to be in danger 
of death, — though, as he tells us, the delay cost 
him centuries of expiation upon the purgatorial 



THE EVIDENCE FOR SURVIVAL 51 

mountains." (Quotations from the Essay in 
question) . 

In view of this I think that the appositeness 
of the first reference, to a timid traveler con- 
fronted by a stream, in a message purporting 
to come from Dr. Verrall will be apparent. 

The third reference is a direct paraphrase of 
a line from the passage which forms the subject 
of the Essay in question. 

The fourth appears to be an allusion to The 
Hair of Berenice ( Catullus ) v/hich for private 
and unpublished reasons is "connected by very 
definite intermediate links with Dr. Verrall' s 
essays on Dante and Statins." Or it may, pos- 
sibly, refer to a poem by Statins himself. 

The words "A man who drove two horses 
in a less ambitious manner" are also highly ap- 
propriate to a message from Dr. Verrall in 
view of the fact that the last work on which he 
was engaged before his death was a set of lec- 
tures on Dryden in the course of which was 



52 THE FOUNDATIONS OF SPIRITUALISM 

quoted a passage from Gray comparing Dry- 
den and Milton and containing the lines : 

"Behold where Dryden's less presumptuous car 
Wide o'er the fields of glory bear 
Two coursers of ethereal race, etc." 

The connection with Milton is confirmed by 
the sixth reference which is a quotation from 
his Sonnet on His Blindness. This is also ap- 
propriate to the lines immediately preceding 
those quoted from Gray above. 

I think it will be admitted that a case of this 
kind provides evidence of a high order of 
cogency, for it is difficult to think of a much 
better way in which a literary man could estab- 
lish his identity than by such veiled references 
to characteristic passages in his own work. 

In conclusion, it is important to note that, 
so far as can be ascertained by careful enquiry, 
the automatist, who is well known to the stu- 
dents of the script, had never seen the Essay 
in question, which first appeared in an obscure 
and ephemeral review and was not published in 



THE EVIDENCE FOR SURVIVAL 53 

accessible form until after the first script had 
been written. 

For criticisms of this case and rephes thereto 
see Proc. S.PM., XXVII, 459-491. 

(B) "The Ear of Dionysiii^" {Proc. 
S.P.R., XXIX, 197-243, 260-286). 

This case closely resembles the "Statins'* 
case in its general features. The supposed 
communicators were Dr. Verrall and Profes- 
sor Butcher. References to the following 
topics were found in the scripts concerned: 
The Ear of Dionysius. 
The stone-quarries at Syracuse where 

prisoners were confined. 
The story of Polyphemus and Ulysses. 
The story of Acis and Galatea. 
Jealousy. 

Music and the sound of a musical instru- 
ment. 
Something to be found in Aristotle's 

Poetics. 
Satire. 



54 THE FOUNDATIONS OF SPIRITUALISM 

These references remained obscure until the 
key to the puzzle was provided in the shape of 
an illusion to Philoxenus of Cythera, an ob- 
scure Greek poet. 

"His friendship with Dionysius the Elder was broken 
either by his frank criticism of the tragedies of the 
tyrant or in consequence of his passion for Galateia, a 
beautiful flute-player^ who was the mistress of Diony- 
sius. Released from prison by the prince to pass judg- 
ment on his verse, the poet exclaimed: 'Take me back 
to the quarries.' In his confinement he revenged him- 
self by composing his famous dithyramb entitled either 
Kyklops or Galateia, in which the poet represented him- 
self as Odysseus, who, to take vengeance on Polyphe- 
mus (Dionysius), estranged the affections of the nymph 
Galateia, of whom the Kyklops was enamored." 

Smyth, Greek Melic Poets. 

Mr. Balfour says: "Here evidently is the 
literary unity of which we were in search, and 
which was to collect the scattered parts of the 
puzzle devised by the two friends on the other 
side into a single whole. . . . Dionysius and 
his 'Ear,' the stone-quarries of Syracuse, 
Ulysses and Polyphemus, Acis and Galatea, 
Jealousy, and Satire — all these topics fall nat- 
urally into place in relation to this account of 



THE EVIDENCE FOR SURVIVAL 55 

the poem. Music and the thrumming of a 
musical instrument can be fitted in without 
much difficulty, as belonging to the character- 
istics of dithyrambic poetry." 

It may be added that the quarries in question 
were known as "The Ear of Dionysius" and 
that reference to Aristotle's Poetics was also 
found to be relevant. 

It is not possible to bring out in so short a 
summary all the minor points which tend to 
increase the evidential value of such cases. 
But even the bare outline is, I think, sufficient 
to render it difficult not to agree with Mr. Bal- 
four when, after drawing attention to the ap- 
pearance of deliberation and selectiveness 
shown by the scripts, he says : 

"I believe the instinctive judgment of 
trained scholars will be that the Dionysius 
puzzle could not have been invented, and elab- 
orated without slip or blunder, except by some- 
body who was himself a scholar, and a ripe and 
good one. Mrs. Willett herself (the automa- 



56 THE FOUNDATIONS OF SPIRITUALISM 

tist) cannot reasonably be credited with its 
authorship." {Proc. S.PM., XXIX, 236.) 

In all the above varieties of evidential com- 
munications there is room for points of re- 
semblance to the personal idiosyncracies of the 
supposed communicator as regards voice, hand- 
writing, manner, or style. It is not uncommon 
to encounter assurances to the effect that a 
trance-speaking medium, for example, spoke 
on a particular occasion in the natural voice of 
the ostensible communicator; or that automatic 
writing resembled that of the communicator 
while alive; or that tricks of manner were ac- 
curately reproduced. 

The "Blanche Abercromby" case referred to 
above is a well-known example of similarity of 
handwriting. In this case the automatist (the 
Revd. Stainton Moses) wrote a passage whose 
caligraphy was stated to bear a close resem- 
blance to that of the lady purporting to in- 
spire the script, and it was believed that Moses 
had never had an opportunity of studying the 



THE EVIDENCE FOR SURVIVAL 57 

original. Dr. Hodgson, whose study of hand- 
writing had done much to expose the frauds 
perpetrated by the Theosophists (Cp. Proc. 
S.P.R., III, 276 sqq.) compared the script 
referred to above with original letters written 
by the supposed conuiiunicator. In his report 
he notes distinct resemblances and goes on to 
say: "The note-book writing suggests that its 
author was attempting to reproduce the ( origi- 
nal) writing by recalling to memory its chief 
peculiarities, and not by copying speci- 
mens. . . ." (Myers, Human Personality, 
Vol. II, 232.) 

Myers apparently regards this judgment as 
being in favor of a supernormal explanation, 
but I confess that, to me, it seems to lend itself 
at least equally well to a more normal explana- 
tion. 

It will, I think, be admitted that evidence of 
this type, would be very strong if the resem- 
blances could be firmly established, but it is 
clearly of a type very difficult to fix in a defi- 



58 THE FOUNDATIONS OF SPIRITUALISM 

nite form and very liable to originate solely in 
the imagination of those present at the time 
it is produced. 

I think it wiser therefore to attach no weight 
to it whatsoever. (Cp. Proc. S.P.B., XXIII, 
36 sqq.) 



IV 

I shall now discuss the explanations, other 
than that of the activity of deceased persons, 
which can be advanced to account for the facts 
which I have briefly described above. 

First of all it is necessary to advert for a 
moment to the question of fraud, which is the 
charge most commonly brought by uninformed 
critics against the adherents of the "Spiritistic" 
explanation. It is, however, wholly inadequate 
to cover the facts. 

Every student of the subject knows that 
fraud has been common from the earliest days 
and that the undiscriminating credulity of 
enthusiasts has, at all times, invited and fos- 
tered it. The early days of modem "Spirit- 
ualism" were distinguished by innumerable 
thaumaturgical performances of a crude and 

59 



60 THE FOUNDATIONS OF SPIRITUALISM 

somewhat nauseating type for which profes- 
sional mediums were almost exclusively re- 
sponsible; these were again and again exposed, 
mainly by members of the Society for Psychi- 
cal Research or persons of the same critical 
school. 

But no serious student of the subject will 
base any arguments for Survival and Com- 
munication on facts in the least resembling 
these early manifestations. I have tried to 
make it clear that the evidence for Survival is 
solely a matter of establishing individual per- 
sonal identity by the content of intelligent 
automatisms of one kind or another, and does 
not in any way depend on the strangeness or 
otherwise of the form which such automatisms 
take. It will, I think, be generally admitted 
that it is far harder to fabricate evidence of this 
kind than to produce spurious "physical" phe- 
nomena of a nature which might be simulated 
by prestidigitation and similar means. 

The cases which I have cited have been taken 



THE EVIDENCE FOR SURVIVAL 6l 

mainly, and in the more important instances, 
exclusively from the records collected by the 
Society for Psychical Research, who, in addi- 
tion to being well versed in fraudulent meth- 
ods, have drawn their material almost entirely 
from priA'ate automatists whose integrity is 
above suspicion. It is indeed very rare for any 
professional medium to receive any attention 
from the Society at all. A certain number, 
were, of course, investigated and exposed in 
the early days; but, so far as the cases quoted 
above are concerned, the only automatist to 
whom the description of "private" does not ac- 
curately apply is Mrs. Piper who, however, 
was under such long and close observation by 
the Society that the chance of fraud may safely 
be regarded as eliminated in her case. Nor, 
indeed, has any such accusation ever been 
brought against her. ^ 

^ Mrs. Leonard whose automatisms form the subj ect- 
matter o£ the paper by Lady Troubridge and Miss 
Radclyffe-Hall referred to at the end of Section III. 
(1) above is not an amateur; but the elaborate precau- 



62 THE FOUNDATIONS OF SPIRITUALISM 

But I do not think that any one will seri- 
ously advance this hypothesis at the present 
time, especially in the case of those varieties of 
evidence described in Section III (4) and (5) 
above. 

The real case against the Spiritistic explana- 
tion should be formulated on quite different 
lines, and it is perhaps not the less strong be- 
cause of the impossibility of devising a sharply 
defined formula to express it. In dealing with 
it I shall not, therefore, propound a rigid alter- 
native hypothesis and then proceed to defend 
it, but shall draw attention to a number of dif- 
ferent considerations which, taken collectively, 
seem to me to make it difficult unreservedly to 
accept the prima fade indications of the evi- 
dence. 

First of all, then, there are the possibilities 
of what may conveniently be called ''Latent 
Memory."* 

tions taken by their investigators to guard against any- 
possible fraud completely convinced them of her abso- 
lute honesty. 



THE EVIDENCE FOR SURVIVAL 63 

Throughout the preceding description of the 
varieties of evidence I have had occasion to 
speak of knowledge possessed by one person 
but not possessed by another. It is, however, 
very difficult — almost impossible — ^to say de- 
finitely that a given person does not "know" a 
thing. An item of information may not be ac- 
cessible at will, but it does not follow that it is 
not buried in some mental stratum from which 
it may be evoked by an appropriate stimulus 
applied at the (literally) psychological mo- 
ment. 

We may even be unaware that the item con- 
cerned has ever been known to us at any time, 
and yet it may be brought out by suitable con- 
ditions. As we walk down the street, or "skim" 
a newspaper, or idly turn the pages of a book, 
or consort with people talking among them- 
selves, we are bombarded by a host of impres- 
sions of the majority of which we are never 
fully conscious. We pay little or no attention 
to them, and unless they are of an exception- 



64 THE FOUNDATIONS OF SPIRITUALISM 

ally obtrusive or insistent natui-e we remain un- 
aware of their very existence. And yet they 
must be supposed to produce some effect on, 
and be registered somewhere in, our minds. 

A good example, in connection with crystal- 
gazing, is given by Miss Goodrich-Freer in her 
book. Essays in Psychical Research (pp. 113- 
114): 

"It had been suggested to me to try to see 
words in the crystal. ... I soon saw, as if in 
a cutting from The Times, the announcement 
of the death of a lady, intimate with near 
friends of my own, and which I should certain- 
ly have regarded as an event of interest and 
consequence under whatever circumstances 
communicated. The announcement gave every 
detail of place, name, and date, with the addi- 
tional statement that it was after a period of 
prolonged suiFering. I had heard nothing of 
the lady — resident in America — for some 
months, and was quite willing to suppose the 



THE EVIDENCE FOR SURVIVAL 65 

communication prophetic or clairvoyant. Of 
this flattering notion I was soon disabused. 
An examination of the paper of the day before 
soon showed that the advertisement was there, 
just as I had seen it in the crystal, and, though 
at first I was inclined to protest that I had 
'never looked at yesterday's paper,' I pres- 
ently remembered that I had in fact handled 
it, using it as a screen to shade my face from 
the fire, while talking to a friend in the after- 
noon. If any one likes to say that I could not 
have read and remembered an announcement 
of strong personal interest without being aw are 
of it, I can only pledge myself to the absolute 
truth of the story and leave the explanation to 
those of wider experience than mine. I may 
add the fact that we have since discovered that 
the lady in question is alive and well, and that 
the announcement related to some one else of 
the same name, by no means a conmion one. 
"I think this detail is of interest, as exclud- 



66 THE FOUNDATIONS OF SPIRITUALISM 

ing the hypothesis of thought-transference 
from some one akeady in possession of the 
news." 

The foregoing, will, I think, suffice to show 
that although it is unlikely that all the observed 
cases can be explained by invoking "latent 
memory," it is a possibility which it is difficult 
to exclude and which should always be borne 
in mind when considering evidence. 

The next difficulty is, of course, the possible 
scope of Telepathy. It is, perhaps, not much 
less remarkable, intrinsically, than the spirit- 
istic hypothesis itself and it might be, and has 
been, urged, that on the score of a priori prob- 
ability there is nothing to be gained by adopt- 
ing the telepathic rather than the spiritistic ex- 
planation. I am not so sure that this is true, 
but even if it is it would apply only so long as 
there was no collateral evidence tending to sup- 
port one theory rather than the other. 

But there is considerable collateral evidence 
in the shape of all those experimental and spon- 



THE EVIDENCE FOR SURVIVAL 67 

taneous facts, to which I referred above and 
which — without in any way suggesting the 
activity of discarnate minds — seem to demand 
Telepathy for their explanation. In accord- 
ance with the general Law of Parsimony, 
therefore, we must not import a new cause (i.e. 
"Spirits") until we have exhausted every other 
known cause (including Telepathy). 

Since the experimental and spontaneous evi- 
dence for Telepathy is distinctly good we must 
reject as inconclusive the whole of the first 
class of evidential matter cited above: that 
class, namely, in which personal details of the 
supposed communicator are given which are 
known to the enquirer but not to the medium. 
There is always the chance that they may have 
been "telepathed" from the enquirer to the 
automatist. 

The fact that the former was "not thinking 
of" the relevant facts at the time does not affect 
this conclusion. There is distinct evidence that 
it is not always the idea which is uppermost in 



68 THE FOUNDATIONS OF SPIRITUALISM 

the "agent's" mind which is most easily trans- 
mitted to the "percipient" in experimental 
Telepathy. It seems more likely that the 
transmission is affected between subliminal 
strata of the minds concerned and that the con- 
temporary supraliminal thought is of im- 
portance only in so far as it may condition the 
content of that stratum of the mind respon- 
sible for the transmission. This it presumably 
often does, but not necessarily always. 

Telepathy has to be stretched rather further 
to cover the second class of case. One has to 
suppose that it is effected by proxy, so to 
speak, or that the mind of the automatist pos- 
sesses the faculty of "picking up" items of 
information from the minds of persons who are 
not present, who are unaware of the process 
and, very likely, are in no way concerned with 
the proceedings at all. 

This seems rather far-fetched, but the fol- 
lowing case, taken from one of Miss Dougall's 
Essays in "Immortality" strongly suggests 



THE EVIDENCE FOR SURVIVAL 69 

that something of the kind may at any rate oc- 
casionally take place: 

"My friend, whom we will call 'Miss A,' re- 
ceived a visit from an acquaintance we will 
call 'Mrs. B.' The mind of Miss A was at the 
time absorbed by the details of some striking 
events which had lately occiured in her own 
circle, but she did not mention these events to 
Mrs. B, who was not an intimate friend, and 
was not personally concerned in them. In the 
course of conversation Mrs. B said she was on 
her way to keep an appointment with a visual- 
izing medium. Asked why she made such ap- 
pointments, she replied that this medium had 
the power to see as in a vision the most impor- 
tant factors of her life, and in that way to give 
her wise advice as to how to act in the present 
and immediate future. Mrs. B took her leave, 
but in a short time unexpectedly called again 
on her way home, to tell Miss A that her visit 
to the medium this time had been disappoint- 
ing and use/ess. The jnedium had had and 



70 THE FOUNDATIONS OF SPIRITUALISM 

had described a series of visions, but nothing 
in them was recognized by Mrs. B, and neither 
she nor the medium could make any sense out 
of the visions. Out of politeness. Miss A in- 
quired their nature, and was amazed when 
Mrs. B's recital set forth with considerable de- 
tail the events which had absorbed her own 
mind during Mrs. B's visit before she went on 
to the seance. One curious detail was added: 
the visions had been ushered into the medium's 
plane of vision by the figure of a Chinaman in 
fine apparel. Now, the odd thing was, that 
that very morning Miss A had happened to 
pass the Chinese Embassy in London, and had 
seen two gorgeously attired Chinamen coming 
down the steps, whose dress had greatly 
pleased her artistic sense. These Chinamen 
had, of course, nothing to do with the other 
events over which in those days her mind was 
brooding." 

I must admit that this case is unique in my 
experience^ but its credentials are good, and I 



THE EVIDENCE FOR SURVIVAL 71 

think it prevents us from excluding the never- 
remote possibility that some form of Telepathy 
may take place between the automatist and 
some person neither present at the time nor in 
any way concerned with the enquiry. It was 
only by chance that the import of the apparent- 
ly irrelevant and meaningless visions was dis- 
covered in this case and it might well be that 
such cases would be comparatively common if 
we happened to hit on the person to whom the 
similarly meaningless matter related. 

In order to evade the spiritistic conclusion 
in the third type of case we have to suppose 
that telepathic impressions may remain latent 
for a very considerable period. But there are 
many incidents, both in deliberately experi- 
mental and in spontaneous cases of Telepathy 
which suggest that the rising of an impression 
into consciousness may be deferred for a short 
time, and it involves only a diiference of de- 
gree, and not of kind, to suppose that the la- 
tency may be of any required duration. 



72 THE FOUNDATIONS OF SPIRITUALISM 

After all, there is no reason to suppose that 
the conditions which determine the accessibility 
to consciousness of an impression acquired tele- 
pathically differ in any way from those affect- 
ing impressions derived through the ordinary 
channels of the senses, and there is every rea- 
son for believing that the latter do remain 
latent for long periods. (Cp. the case of Miss 
Goodrich-Fever above, the ability of many 
persons to remember under hypnosis incidents 
of their lives which are inaccessible to them in 
their normal state and the results of modern 
Psychoanalytic methods. ) 

There is, moreover, as always, the question 
of what is or is not known (see above) , and we 
ought not to ignore the possibility of what is 
commonly called "clairvoyance," i.e., the fac- 
ulty of perceiving events or objects at a dis- 
tance otherwise than through the ordinary 
sense-organs. 

For these reasons I do not regard even the 
third class of case as in any way coercive, and 



THE EVIDENCE FOR SURVIVAL 73 

should not do so even if instances of it were 
very much more numerous and better authen- 
ticated than they actually are. 

On the other hand, I do not think that any 
degree of "blind" or "automatic" Telepathy 
will satisfactorily account for the remaining 
t^vo classes, which are distinguished by a pur- 
posivity and appearance of design which seems 
to demand for its production an active initiat- 
ing intelligence of some kind. 

It will be necessary to assume a large meas- 
ure of Telepathy here also, but the more im- 
portant question is whether there may exist 
some mental stratum or secondary personality 
of one of the automatists concerned capable 
of collecting the requisite material and utiliz- 
ing it in the markedly intelligent manner which 
is apparent in, for instance, the "Ear of Diony- 
sius" case. To this question our present 
knowledge, in my opinion, does not admit of a 
definite answer, for there are various consider- 
ations which show that we should exercise great 



74, THE FOUNDATIONS OF SPIRITUALISM 

caution in attempting to assign definite su- 
perior limits to the capabilities of incarnate 
human minds. 

In the first place it should be clearly realized 
that all forms of automatism seem to consist, 
in the first instance, in the "tapping" of what 
are commonly known as the "subliminal" strata 
of the mind. It is not necessary to enter here 
into a detailed discussion of the precise psy- 
chological significance which should be at- 
tached to this term, which was introduced by 
the late F. W. H. Myers to denote all those 
thoughts, feelings, or psychological processes 
which take place "below the threshold," or "be- 
yond the marginal fringe," or "outside the 
focus" of normal consciousness. He says 
(Human Personality, I, xxi) : 

"Excitations are termed subliminal when 
they are too weak to rise into direct notice; 
and I have extended the application of the 
term to feeling, thought, or faculty, which is 
kejDt thus submerged, not by its own weakness, 



THE EVIDENCE FOR SURVIVAL 75 

but by the constitution of man's personality. 
The threshold (Schwelle) must be regarded as 
a level above which waves may rise — like a slab 
washed by the sea — rather than as the entrance 
into a chamber." 

The powers of this subliminal self are un- 
doubtedly very great indeed, and we can form 
some idea of their nature and extent by the 
study of hypnotic and other trance states, of 
psycho-pathological derangements, of dreams, 
and of those automatisms into which there en- 
ters no question of intervention ab extra. 

We thus find, that it is exceedingly suggest- 
ible; that it is capable of performing quite 
elaborate mental processes, such as calculations 
and the solution of mathematical problems, 
without the assistance of the supraliminal mind 
(Myers' Human Persmiality, II, 372-379) ; 
that latent memories are more accessible to it 
than to the normal self (ibid. 370-d:) ; that it is 
sometimes capable of playing a suggested part 
with a fidelity and histrionic skill beyond the 



76 THE FOUNDATIONS OF SPIRITUALISM 

powers of the normal consciousness ; that it will 
resort to the most ingenious and disingenuous 
shifts and evasions in order to conceal de- 
ficiencies in its knowledge or imperfections 
in its personation; and that it possesses dra- 
matic powers of a high order, as is shown by 
the processes of dream-formation. 

The phenomena of Multiple Personality are 
also relevant. The best known instances are 
those of Ansel Bourne (Myers' Human Per- 
sonality, I, 309-17), of Miss Beauchamp 
{Proc. S.P.E., XV, 466-83), of the Bevd. T. 
C. Hanna (Sidis & Goodhart's Multiple Per- 
sonality^), and of the "Doris" case (Proc. 
American S.P.R., Vols. IX, X, and XI) . 

It is true that certain authorities regard 
these cases of altered personality as being due 
to "possession" by an invading discarnate 
entity, but it is doubtful whether any consid- 
erable number of competent psycho-patholo- 

^New York: D. Appleton & Co. 



THE EVIDENCE FOR SURVIVAL 77 

gists having first-hand knowledge of such cases 
would support this view. 

The case of "Lucie" described by Janet in 
his L'Automatisms Psychologique and sum- 
marized by Myers {op. cit., I, 326-331) is of 
especial interest. In this case the patient's 
hand would write answers to questions and 
other matter while the attention of the normal 
or principal consciousness was otherwise en- 
gaged. 

Speaking of the genesis of this phenomenon, 
Myers says: "This was the moment at which 
in many cases a new and separate invading 
personality is assumed; and if Lucie had be- 
lieved in possession by devils — as so many 
similarly constituted subjects in old times be- 
lieved — we can hardly doubt that the energy 
now writing through her hand would have as- 
sumed the style and title of a 'familiar spirit.' 
Or if, again, she had been a modern Spiritual- 
ist, it is probable that the signature of some 
deceased friend would have appeared at the 



78 THE FOUNDATIONS OF SPIRITUALISM 

foot of these communications. But here the 
communicating intelligence was of so obviously 
artificial a kind that it could scarcely venture 
to pretend to be either a devil or Lucie's grand- 
mother." 

And again: "We have here demonstrably 
what we can find in other cases only inferen- 
tially — an intelligence manifesting itself con- 
tinuously by written answers, of purport quite 
outside the normal subject's supraliminal 
mind, while yet that intelligence was but a 
part, a fraction, an aspect, of the normal sub- 
ject's own identity. 

"We must bear this ascertained fact — for 
it is as near to an ascertained fact as anything 
in this perplexing inquiry can bring us — 
steadily in mind while we deal with future 
cases. And we must remember that Adrienne 
(the name given to the artificial secondary per- 
sonality) — while she was, if I may so say, the 
subliminal self reduced to its simplest expres- 
sion — did, nevertheless, manifest certain dif- 



THE EVIDENCE FOR SURVIVAL 79 

ferences from Lucie, which, if shghtly exag- 
gerated, might have been very perplexing. 
Her handwriting was slightly different, though 
only in the loose and sprawling character so 
often found in automatic script. Suppose the 
handwriting had been rather moi^e different, 
and had vaguely resembled that of some de- 
ceased member of the family. It is easy to 
understand what inferences might have been 
based on such a fact. Again, Adrienne re- 
membered certain incidents in Lucie's child- 
hood which Lucie had wholly forgotten. 
These events occurred at a grandmother's 
house. Suppose that the sentence recording 
them had been signed with the grandmother's 
name, instead of with the merely arbitrary 
name selected for the convenience of a cool 
observer. Here, too, it is easy to imagine the 
confidence — in one sense the well-grounded 
confidence — with which any knowledge on 
Lucie's own part of those long past events 
would have been disclaimed." 



80 THE FOUNDATIONS OF SPIRITUALISM 

So far as general features are concerned, it 
will scarcely be denied that the change involved 
in passing from a case of this kind to the or- 
dinary forms of automatic writing, trance- 
speaking, and other varieties of "mediumship" 
is only a matter of degree and not of kind. We 
must accordingly demand something very ex- 
ceptional in the content of the automatic utter- 
ances before we admit so wholly different a 
cause, qualitatively, as the activity of discar- 
nate minds. In accordance with the general 
scientific principle of least assumption, we 
must assume that the immediate cause of medi- 
umistic automatisms is a somewhat elaborated 
secondary personality of this kind. We must 
also suppose that the various other factors of 
Telepathy, Latent Memory, Subliminal men- 
tal activity, and so forth, which were noted 
above, may also be at work simultaneously in 
proportions and degrees to which, in our pres- 
ent ignorance, we cannot assign any definite 
superior limits. 



THE EVIDENCE FOR SURVIVAL 81 

If we do this, it is clearly a matter of great 
difficulty even to devise any type of evidence 
which could be regarded as really coercive. 

In fact, the true case against the spiritistic 
hypothesis is simply that our knowledge of 
abnormal psychology is not, at present, ex- 
tensive enough to admit of our assigning defi- 
nite limits to what can be achieved by the in- 
carnate mind under suitable conditions, and 
that, until we are in a position to do so with 
reasonable precision, we cannot possibly say 
that any particular feat is beyond its powers 
and therefore necessarily due to the interven- 
tion of discarnate intelligences. 

It must be admitted that an argument of 
this nature is somewhat unsatisfactory and that 
it will not enable us to offer a neat, cut-and- 
dried explanation of every evidential "case" 
which we encounter. But it is in this very 
vagueness and lack of precision that its 
strength is founded. 



In attempting to form some opinion of the 
net resultant of these various considerations, 
it is important to remember that it is not legiti- 
mate to speak of "conclusive proof" or "ab- 
solute certainty" in any department of human 
knowledge. Our greatest certainties are no 
more than assessments of probabilities at a 
fraction closely approaching unity, and we 
cannot hope to do more than form a rough 
estimate of the comparative chances of the 
spiritistic or non-spiritistic explanations being 
actually correct. 

This estimate will be the product of two 

fairly distinct factors : one the result of ad hoc 

investigation of the type summarized above, 

the other arising from our a priori views on the 

subject and determined quantitatively by the 

82 



THE EVIDENCE FOR SURVIVAL 88 

amount of straining necessary to fit the con- 
clusions derived from our ad hoc study into 
the context of our general experience. 

I am properly concerned here only with the 
former of these two factors, but, inasmuch as 
it is difficult to draw a hard-and-fast dividing 
line between the considerations which deter- 
mine the two factors, a personal equation is 
always liable to complicate any attempt to sum 
up the result of an ad hoc inquiry. I therefore 
feel that it is germane to the discussion to ob- 
serve that, while I, personally, happen to be- 
lieve in Immortality on general religious and 
philosophic grounds, I find no more difficulty 
in supposing that it is of a type which does not 
admit of experimental verification than in sup- 
posing the opposite: and conversely. On a 
priori grounds it seems to me to be just about 
as likely that communication with the living 
should be precluded by the conditions under 
which one survives death as that it should be 
admitted. 



84 THE FOUNDATIONS OF SPIRITUALISM 

As regards the actual evidence, the whole 
position reminds me strongly of that of astro- 
nomical science before the revolution of ideas 
commonly associated with the name of Coper- 
nicus. 

The early astronomers, attempting to ex- 
plain the observed apparent movements of the 
sun, moon, planets, and stars, hypothesized 
sundry combinations of concentric, excentric, 
and epicyclic motions taking place about the 
stationary earth. But the more closely the ap- 
parent motions were observed, the more com- 
plex was the system of excentrics, etc., re- 
quired to explain them. Finally, the whole 
system broke down, and was superseded by the 
far simpler views now held. In a somewhat 
similar manner we are being forced into ad- 
mitting more and more complicated concatena- 
tions of Telepathy, Subliminal mental activity. 
Secondary Personalitj^ and the like in order to 
evade the spiritistic explanation of certain 
psychical phenomena. 



THE EVIDENCE FOR SURVIVAL 85 

The analogy should not, of course, be pushed 
to the extent of concluding that there is, simply 
on account of the analogy, any considerable 
probability that we shall ultimately be forced 
to substitute the spiritistic explanation for the 
action of the alternative causes. These latter 
will presumably always give rise to "perturba- 
tions," so to speak, even if the former is ever 
recognized as an actual cause. Meanwhile, I 
am of the opinion that, taking into considera- 
tion all the available evidence, the balance of 
probabilities is, on the whole, in favor of the 
spiritistic explanation — not by any means 
overwhelmingly, but still distinctly so. It is 
quite possible that as our knowledge of ab- 
normal psychology increases and new and 
more crucial tests of Survival are devised — 
and, perhaps, fail — that I shall alter this opin- 
ion. But at present the trend of research 
seems to me to be in this direction. In the com- 
petition between the devising of new tj^pes of 
evidence for Survival and new ways of evading 



86 THE FOUNDATIONS OF SPIRITUALISM 

their implications — somewhat reminiscent of 
the struggle between offensive and defensive 
weapons in the military world — the exponents 
of the former process seem to be drawing 
ahead. This appears to me to be significant; 
but it is quite possible that the process may be 
reversed in the future. 

The following passage from the pen of Pro- 
fessor William James, with which I largely 
sympathize, may suitably close this part of the 
discussion. It is taken from his report on Mrs. 
Piper's "Plodgson Control": 

"I myself can perfectly well imagine spirit- 
agency, and I find my mind vacillating about it 
curiously. When I take the phenomena piece- 
meal, the notion that Mrs. Piper's subliminal 
self should keep her sitters apart as expertly 
as it does, remembering its past dealings with 
each of them so well, not mixing their com- 
munications more, and all the while humbug- 
ging them so profusely, is quite compatible 
with what we know of the dream-life of hyp- 



THE EVIDENCE FOR SURVIVAL 87 

notized subjects. Their consciousness, nar- 
rowed to one suggested kind of operation, 
shows remarkable skill in that operation. If 
we suppose Mrs. Piper's dream-life once for 
all to have had the notion suggested to it that 
it must personate spirits to sitters, the fair 
degree of virtuosity it shows need not, I think, 
surprise us. Nor need the exceptional memory 
shown surprise us, for memory seems extra- 
ordinarily strong in the sub-conscious life. 
But I find that when I ascend from the details 
to the whole meaning of the phenomenon, and 
especially when I connect the Piper case with 
all the other cases I know of automatic writing 
and mediumship, and with the whole record of 
s]3irit-possession in human history, the notion 
that such an immense current of experience, 
complex in so many ways, should spell out 
absolutely nothing but the words 'intentional 
humbug' appears very unlikely. The notion 
that so many men and women, in all other re- 
spects honest enough, should have this pre- 



88 THE FOUNDATIONS OF SPIRITUALISM 

posterous monkeying self attached to their per- 
sonahty seems to me so weird that the spirit- 
theory immediately takes on a more probable 
appearance. The spirits, if spirits there be, 
must indeed work under incredible complica- 
tions and falsifications, but at least, if they are 
present, some honesty is left in a whole depart- 
ment of the universe which otherwise is run by 
pure deception. . . . 

"I am able, while still holding to all the 
lower principles of interpretation, to imagine 
the process as more complex. . . . 

"I can imagine the spii'it of (Hodgson) 
talking to me through inconceivable barriers 
of obstruction, and forcing recalcitrant or only 
partly consilient processes in the Medium to 
express his thoughts, however dimly." (Proc. 
S.P.B., XXIII, 35-6.) 



PART II 

THE PROCESS OF COMMUNICA^ 
TION 



VI 

In the remainder of this paper I propose to 
discuss the value which should be attached to 
the descriptive and didactic matter obtained 
from mediumistic sources. For this purpose 
I shall make the temporarj^ assumption that 
some measure of communication may be re- 
garded as experimentally established ; but this 
assumption does not, of course, imply that my 
opinion of the evidence is in any way more 
favorable to the spiritistic explanation than is 
indicated by the closing paragraj^hs of the first 
part of the paper. It is possible to treat this 
didactic matter with comparative brevity, for 
the value to be attached to it must necessarily 
be greatly modified by the doubt which exists 
as to its origin. It is futile to discuss in great 

detail what is said by the spirits of the deceased 

91 



92 THE FOUNDATIONS OF SPIRITUALISM 

until we are sure that it is they who are saying 
it. 

The compHcations which appear to prevent 
the accurate transmission of ideas between the 
two states of being can be roughly divided un- 
der various heads. 

First, there is the intrinsic nature of the next 
life itself. Whatever views may be held on 
general grounds as to the environment in which 
the newly deceased personality finds itself, it 
will scarcely be maintained that it is a material 
environment of precisely the same nature as 
that to which we are accustomed. It seems un- 
likely that "matter" as known to us will play 
any part in it at all — ^it is, perhaps, more prob- 
able that it will be a purely "mental" existence, 
although it must be admitted that it is difficult 
to attach any precise meaning to such a phrase. 

But whatever its nature may be it is at least 
possible — indeed probable — ^that it is some- 
thing to which our earthly experience affords 
no parallel. If this is so, it would be practi- 



THE PROCESS OF COMMUNICATION 98 

cally impossible to find mundane terms or ideas 
capable of describing it. It is not difficult to 
show that it is not impossible to convey an en- 
tirely new concept from one mind to another, 
even if one has the ordinary processes of speech 
or w^riting fully at command. All one can do 
is to produce new arrangements of existing 
concepts in varying proportions and degrees; 
completely new concepts can be acquired only 
by immediate personal experience. ( Consider, 
for example, the task of trying to convey the 
idea of hlueness to a man who has been blind 
from birth.) 

It is, consequently, easy to understand how 
any attempted description of the next life 
would inevitably take the form of symbolic 
statements in terms of earthly experience — ^the 
only material common to the minds of both 
parties to the description. 

I feel that it is fair to observe that we ap- 
pear to have an almost perfect example of this 
in the descriptive matter of the Apocalypse. 



94 THE FOUNDATIONS OF SPIRITUALISM 

Few people would care to maintain that these 
descriptions are to be taken literally, and, if 
they were to do so, it would be legitimate to 
apply to them all the accusations of crude ma- 
terialism which are brought against certain 
spiritualistic versions of the nature of the next 
life. Similarly any interpretation of the 
Apocalyptic visions as being "only symbolic" 
may, I think, reasonably be applied to the de- 
scriptive matter of Spiritualism. 

The second point which it is important to 
note is that, whatever else may take place in 
the process of communication, we certainly are 
not dealing with a matter of verbatim dicta- 
tion. There can be practically no doubt what- 
ever that the phenomenon of automatism, 
whatever form it may take, consists, primarily 
in the "tapping" of the subliminal mind and 
in the concomitant abrogation of the normal 
control of the Judgment and of the Will. That 
is to say, the communications which we actually 
receive are the responses of the subliminal mind 



THE PROCESS OF COMMUNICATION 95 

to certain stimuli, and the only question is 
whether any of these stimuli are of discarnate 
origin. Even if they are so, it seems safe to 
suppose, both on experimental and a priori 
grounds, that they cannot be in the form of the 
articulated speech or writing to which we are 
accustomed. If communication between incar- 
nate and discarnate minds can take place at 
all, it seems likely, since the latter can hardly 
be supposed to possess physical bodies like our 
own, that the process will be essentially tele- 
pathic in nature. But, as we have already 
seen, the telepathic process seems to consist in 
the transmission of ideas as simultaneities and 
not as successions of stimuli to be synthesized 
by the recipient. Professor Hyslop, whose 
discussion of this matter in the last five chap- 
ters of his book Life after Death ^ is excellent, 
speaks, in this connection, of the "pictographic 
process," a term which admirably suggests a 
presentational mode of transmitting ideas. 

^New York: E. P. Dutton & Company. 



96 THE FOUNDATIONS OF SPIRITUALISM 

It must also be remembered that the intelli- 
gence to which ideas are thus transmitted ap- 
pears to be, not a normal personality equipped 
with the usual faculties of judgment and dis- 
crimination, but a sort of "dream-personality" 
subject to all the illogicalities and rambling 
divagations which beset our dreams, and this 
is probably one of the principal sources of 
error. Without committing ourselves to the 
associationist view of psychology, which Wil- 
liam James adequately exploded thirty years 
ago, it may be conceded that there is a ten- 
dency for ideas to be associated together in 
our minds in such a way that the excitation of 
one will tend to evoke another. The form 
which such associations of ideas will take is 
peculiar to every individual, simply because 
the connection between different ideas in a 
given mind is the result of the previous experi- 
ence of that mind — which is necessarily unique. 
This fact is utilized by psycho-analysts, and it 
is possible that an adaptation of it may pro- 



THE PROCESS OF COMMUNICATION 97 

vide Psychical Researchers in the future with 
a new test for Survival. But for the present 
purpose it is sufficient to point out that its ef- 
fect may very well be that a given idea tele- 
pathically transmitted to the subliminal mind 
of an automatist may be emitted, not as the 
original idea, but as one associated therewith 
in that subliminal mind. This might especially 
be the case, I think, with common ideas hav- 
ing, by virtue of their commonness, numerous 
associations in almost every mind. 

Moreover, since different people associate 
ideas in different ways, it is likely that ideas 
transmitted will be "colored" by the general 
content of the automatist' s mind. A mind 
which has been brought up in an atmosphere 
of contrasted brimstone and golden harps will 
tend to produce descriptions in these terms, 
while one which has absorbed the commoner 
insipidities of "Higher Thought," or the pe- 
culiar nomenclature of the Theosophists or 
Rosicrucians, will show a corresponding bias. 



98 THE FOUNDATIONS OF SPIRITUALISM 

This liability of the automatist's mind to run in 
grooves determined by intellectual environ- 
ment is copiously exemplified in practice. In 
Roman Catholic countries, for instance, there 
is a tendency for automatists to be "controlled" 
by soi disant devils; "Allan Kardec," a keen 
reincarnationist, found that the mediums whom 
he studied, and who may reasonably be sup- 
posed to have absorbed his views to some ex- 
tent, commonly transmitted messages support- 
ing this theory, and it is easy to recognize 
Theosophical doctrines in the lucubrations of 
many modern mediums. 

It is not difficult to imagine how this kind 
of thing may result in serious distortion of the 
message which the communicator, if such there 
be, intended to convey. 

The next important fact to take into con- 
sideration is the part played in the process by 
the intelhgence known as the "Control." 

The control is a personality — real or fictiti- 
ous — ^who generally, if not invariably, appears 



THE PROCESS OF COMMUNICATION 99 

to act as intermediary between the medium and 
the actual communicator. It is suggested that 
he or she is especially skilled in the manipula- 
tion of the medium's bodily mechanism and 
that better results are obtained if the control 
passes on the ideas which the "communicator" 
wishes to convey, and generally acts as aman- 
uensis, than if the latter tries to operate di- 
rect. Well-known controls are "Phinuit" and 
"Rector" in the case of Mrs. Piper, and . 

"Feda" in that of Mrs. Leonard. Of these J 
the second has probably been studied more 
closely than any other. The classical work on 
the subject is Mrs. Sidgwick's monumental 
essay in Vol. XXVIII of the Proceedings of 
the S.P.R. Her provisional conclusion is that 
the control is probably no more than a second- 
ary personality of the medium's own mind, and, 
although this cannot be regarded as finally 
settled, it certainly seems the most plausible 
hypothesis. 

But whether controls are, in general, no 



100 THE FOUNDATIONS OF SPIRITUALISM 

more than dream-personalities of the automa- 
tist, or whether they are the actual discarnate 
beings which they claim to be, does not affect 
the fact that they seem to be the usual channel 
for the transmission of messages, and this fact 
obviously adds another possibility of distortion 
to those already enimaerated. It must be ad- 
mitted that we do not always find a control 
taking charge of automatic utterances, but it 
may very well be that, in cases where no such 
intelligence intrudes itself on our notice, its 
absence is due only to a failure on the part of 
that dissociated fragment of the automatist's 
mind which is concerned to claim a separate 
individual existence. 

Some students consider that a process of 
"tandem" control sometimes occurs, in which 
the communicator passes his thought to con- 
trol "A," and control "A" passes it on to con- 
trol "B," who actually manages the automat- 
ist's bodily mechanism. (Cp. Hyslop, op. cit.j 
213 sqq.) 



THE PROCESS OF COMMUNICATION 101 

The whole question is a very difficult one, 
but the mere mention of the possibilities will 
suffice to show the complications which may 
arise in this way. 

Another suggestion which has been made by 
certain authorities is that the communicator 
may himself be in an abnormal condition cor- 
responding to that of the incarnate automatist. 
I do not, personally, think that there is much 
evidence to support this view beyond oc- 
casional remarks by ostensible communicators 
themselves, but it is certainly not unreasonable 
to suppose that a reciprocal rapprochement is 
necessary in order to bridge the gulf separat- 
ing the two orders of existence. If this be so 
(and we cannot exclude such a possibility), a 
further source of complication would be intro- 
duced. 

Yet another possibihty is described by 
Hyslop {op. cit., 201) in the following words: 

"There is one more difficulty of very con- 
siderable importance which seldom or never 



102 THE FOUNDATIONS OF SPIRITUALISM 

receives notice. It is the liability to differ- 
ences of opinion about the spiritual world on 
the part of its inhabitants. We never think of 
this, or we ignore it if we do think of it. It is 
the habit to assume that a message from the 
spiritual world tells the facts about it, and we 
forget . . . that it may be nothing more than 
the communicator's opinion about it.*' 

There is also much evidence tending to show 
that the automatist's mental condition is very 
unstable, and that the condition of equilibrium 
which admits of a given communicator retain- 
ing sole command of the psychic mechanism in- 
volved is easily disturbed. When we remem- 
ber that the whole process of communication, 
if it takes place at all, appears to consist 
of a sequence of telepathic transmissions of 
thought, we can easily imagine how this might 
result in the intrusion of the irrelevant 
thoughts of other discarnate — or perhaps in- 
carnate — personalities in the neighborhood. 
If we are talking to a friend in a room full of 



THE PROCESS OF COMMUNICATION 103 

people who are also talking to each other, we 
are oblivious of what these latter are saying 
so long as we keep our attention concentrated 
on what our own friend is saying; but if we 
relax this attention for a moment, we instantly 
become conscious of fragments of other con- 
versations. Something of the same kind often 
appears to happen in the process of communi- 
cation which we are considering here, and, even 
if no alien thoughts intrude, there is the pos- 
sibility of the automatist's own mind simply 
"rambling on" until the necessary condition of 
equiUbrium or attention is reestablished. 

These brief notes do not profess to be in any 
sense a complete description of the complica- 
tions which may reasonably be supposed to at- 
tend the process. A detailed discussion of 
them would be out of place here, and my object 
is only to show that they are so numerous and 
obscure that they render the descriptive matter 
actually obtained quite worthless except as ma- 
terial for study by experienced students. 



104 THE FOUNDATIONS OF SPIRITUALISM 

Any one who doubts the legitimacy of this 
conclusion should read Chapters VII, VIII, 
and IX of Professor Hyslop"s Life after 
Death referred to above. 



VII 

In view of the very great known, and pos- 
sibly still greater unknown, sources of distor- 
tion, I think it will be agreed that it is mere 
waste of time to pay serious attention to the 
charges of crudity, absurdity, and heterodoxy 
which have been brought by amateur critics 
against, for example, certain passages in Sir 
Oliver Lodge's Raymond. ^ The existence of 
such passages, which are common enough in 
spiritualistic literature, and the inconsistencies 
between them, can adequately be accounted for 
on the lines indicated above, whether we accept 
or reject the spiritistic explanation of the 
origin of other — evidential — matter. Those 
who reject the latter must perforce ascribe 
such passages to the uncontrolled activities of 

*New York: G. H. Doran Co. 
105 



106 THE FOUNDATIONS OF SPIRITUALISM 

the automatist's subliminal mind, and they can- 
not legitimately deny to their opponents the 
right to account for them on the same grounds, 
merely because the latter contend that some 
small percentage of the matter obtained has its 
ultimate origin in the minds of discarnate per- 
sonalities. 

It must be admitted, of course, that passages 
of the kind we are considering have a certain 
practical importance by virtue of the effect 
that they may produce on the minds of unin- 
structed adherents of the spiritualistic cult. 
This is dealt with below. 

I feel that the considerations outlined above 
are also relevant to the views of those who seek 
to attribute to diabolic origin all messages 
purporting to emanate from the deceased. 
This is a point of view which I, personally, find 
it difficult to understand, for it seems to me 
that it not only prejudges the issue of a very 
intricate investigation, but also lacks any sort 
of good evidence to support it. It is true that, 



THE PROCESS OF COMMUNICATION 107 

as noted above, one sometimes finds "controls" 
claiming to be evil spirits, but, clearly, the last 
thing we should do is to take any control at 
his own valuation. In the absence of normal 
consciousness a secondary personality might 
just as well play the part of a devil as of a 
saint, if it happened for any reason to receive 
an appropriate suggestion. Nor do I consider 
that the doctrinal content of the communica- 
tions received is sufficiently subversive of 
Christian teaching to warrant our ascribing 
it to deliberately evil sources. In general, the 
moral tone is unexceptionable, and the unfor- 
tunate tendency to indulge in vague aphorisms 
and sententious platitudes is not confined to 
admonitions derived from these sources. 

It must be admitted that heterodox passages 
are not uncommon, but neither in quantity nor 
in quality do they exceed what one might legit- 
imately expect to proceed from subliminal 
origins. 

In this connection it is worth while calling 



^ j ^ f p l"' " 



108 THE FOUNDATIONS OF SPIRITUALISM 

attention to certain aspects of the work of 
Freud, Jung, Pfister, and other psycho- 
analysts of the Viennese and Zurich schools. 
These authorities, headed by Freud, the pupil 
of Breuer, have shown good reason for suppos- 
ing that the origin of hysterical symptoms is 
to be found in unfulfilled desires and wishes, 
unexpressed and frequently unknown to the 
patient. They have further shown that such 
desires, inhibited — often subconsciously — dur- 
ing normal waking life, for reasons of ethics or 
expediency with which they would conflict, find 
an outlet in the form of dreams. It is supposed 
that the latter commonly possess a latent and 
hidden meaning, more or less effectively dis- 
guised by the dramatic form in which they are 
cast, which can be elicited by an experienced 
interpreter. In its general principles this view 
seems firmly established, and we need not dis- 
pute the proposition that dream-life is likely 
to reproduce the repressed mental tendencies 
of the dreamer. 



THE PROCESS OF COMMUNICATION 109 

The importance of this for our present pur- 
pose lies in the fact that the mental strata 
tapped in automatism appear to be closely re- 
lated to, indeed very probably identical with, 
those responsible for dream-formation. In 
such circumstances it is not surprising that 
utterances primarily derived from these strata 
should exhibit heterodox features different 
from, and sometimes repugnant to, the con- 
sidered views of the automatist. This is es- 
pecially likely to be the case where matters of 
sexual morality are concerned because of the 
great strength and deep-seated origin of sex- 
ual impulses and the rigor with which they are 
normally repressed in civilized life. 

I suggest that the foregoing considerations 
are sufficient to account for the whole of the 
religiously obnoxious matter to be found in 
spiritualistic literature, without introducing 
any specifically diabolic factor. It may be 
noted, however, that if communication with 
deceased persons does take place at all, there is 



110 THE FOUNDATIONS OF SPIRITUALISM 

no reason to suppose that the process is one re- 
served only for those of exemplary moral char- 
acter; it is quite possible that the most objec- 
tionable personalities might on occasion pre- 
sent themselves and attempt to communicate, 
and, indeed, any one familiar with the usual 
run of amateur experiments in automatism 
will probably have encountered, or heard of, 
cases in which this has apparently hapj)ened. 
For myself, I wish for no closer approximation 
to a diabolic entity than the discarnate spirit 
of a deliberately wicked human being — or even 
a Secondary Personality derived from the 
worst elements in the mental make-up of the 
ordinary man. It may be noted, however, that 
such unpleasant intelligences are usually easily 
disposed of, and, in any case, no sensible per- 
son will pay any attention to them except as 
objects of psychological study. 

The foregoing will, I hope, be thought ade- 
quate to support my contention that polemics 



THE PROCESS OF COMMUNICATION 111 

centering round the descriptive matter of 
spiritualistic literature are irrelevant — except 
in so far as they may deal with purely technical 
points ; and proceed from an imperfect appre- 
ciation of the complexities of the subject on 
the part of those who prosecute them. 

In these circumstances it is not necessary to 
deal exhaustively with the indications of the 
very small residuum which may reasonably be 
supposed to remain after due allowance has 
been made for the difficulties of interpretation 
and on the continued assumption that the be- 
lief in communication may have some founda- 
tion in experimental fact. I consider the whole 
subject to be so obscure that it is at present 
premature to express any opinion whatever 
as to the nature of the next life; but, if I were 
pressed on the point, I should feel disposed to 
say that the evidence, so far as it goes, sug- 
gests the following conclusions : 

1. A man is the same five minutes after 



112 THE FOUNDATIONS OF SPIRITUALISM 

death as he was five minutes before it, except 
that he has added one more item to his stock 
of experiences. 

2. That the whole content of consciousness 
is carried forward into his new environment; 
that is to say, his memory is unimpaired and 
substantially continuous. 

3. He is not translated instantaneously 
either to perfect bliss or the reverse, but con- 
tinues to reap the fruits of his past life by the 
operation of inexorable causal laws. 

4). His state is not static, but one of pro- 
gression or retrogression, as in the life we 
know. 

5. He is capable of taking an interest in, 
and — ex hypothesi — ^maintaining some meas- 
ure of contact with, the world he has left. 

6. Some kind of serviceable activity is-— 
still more doubtfully — indicated. 

I do not think that any of the foregoing 
points can fairly be said seriously to conflict 
with orthodox Christian teaching, and, in any 



THE PROCESS OF COMMUNICATION 113 

event, I am not prepared to defend any of them 
very vigorously except perhaps on general 
grounds only remotely connected with Psychi- 
cal Research. 



PART III 
CONCLUSIONS 



VIII 

It now remains only to correlate the con- 
clusions expressed above with modern Spirit- 
ualism as it actually exists. 

These conclusions may briefly be summar- 
ized as follows: 

(1) The experimental evidence for Sur- 
vival and Communication with the deceased 
is distinctly good, and shows a tendency to 
become increasingly so. But it is very diffi- 
cult to set a limit to the potentialities of the 
incarnate mind, and it would be rash to assess 
the chance of the "spiritistic" hypothesis prov- 
ing correct at a value appreciably greater 
than one half. 

(2) The difficulties of interpreting the mat- 
ter obtained from mediumistic sources are so 
gi-eat that, even if the spiritistic hypothesis is 

117 



118 THE FOUNDATIONS OF SPIRITUALISM 

correct, the informative value of the messages 
received is neghgible. 

Our final opinion of the value of specific- 
ally "Spiritualistic" doctrine must be the pro- 
dnict of these two conclusions; and, if even 
their approximate correctness be admitted, 
there can be no doubt that the phenomenal 
basis of Spiritualism affords no scientific war- 
rant for the erection of the massive religio- 
philosophical superstructure which certain un- 
critical enthusiasts seek to build upon it. If 
Spiritualists were to confine themselves to af- 
firming the experimental verification of Sur- 
vival, I would be prepared to concede that they 
were very likely right. But this would not of 
itself serve to differentiate them as a separate 
sect; there are many authorities more experi- 
enced than myself and certainly not less criti- 
cal, who assess the evidence much more highly 
than I do, but who feel an equal repugnance 
to "Spiritualism." It is in their acceptance of 
"Spirit Teachings" as a "New Revelation" that 



CONCLUSIONS 119 

Spiritualists are treading on thoroughly unsafe 
ground, for the reasons given in the second part 
of this paper. 

Psychical Research is probably the most in- 
tricate subject with which the human intellect 
has ever grappled, and those who have studied 
it most will most readily admit the difficulty 
of forming reliable conclusions about it. The 
average Spiritualist has little or no scientific 
training, and is totally unacquainted with the 
technical difficulties of the subject. Even if we 
concede that in the very best cases there is 
reason to suppose that some measure of com- 
munication with the deceased is achieved, we 
cannot possibly extend this conclusion to all 
cases in which a discarnate personality pur- 
ports to communicate. How is the ordinary 
person to discriminate between the true and 
the false? Even if so much as five per cent of 
mediumistic utterances are in some degree in- 
spired by their ostensible authors, how is the 
ordinary man to know which five per cent is so 



|pv> 



120 THE FOUNDATIONS OF SPIRITUALISM 

inspired — or to what extent ? Cases are by no 
means uncommon in which the "Spirit" can be 
proved to have been no more than a subHminal 
impersonation which, in slightly different cir- 
cumstances, would indubitably have been ac- 
cepted at its own valuation. 

The ordinary person who is "convinced" of 
the truth of Spiritualistic claims is commonly 
so convinced by the simpler types of first-hand 
evidence, and these are quite valueless in the 
light of instructed criticism. Any indication 
of supernormal powers on the part of a med- 
ium is sufficient for most people, who are com- 
monly guilty of the most astounding illogical- 
ities. Such persons will frequently develop 
automatic faculties in themselves, and I have 
known cases where people have directed their 
whole lives by the instructions thus automati- 
cally obtained. The crass folly and grave dan- 
ger of ^such a course needs no emphasis from 
me. 

I consider, therefore, that it is impossible to 



CONCLUSIONS 121 

deprecate too strongly promiscuous dabbling 
in psychical matters by uninstructed persons, 
especially those of strong emotional tendency. 
It is true that those who talk glibly of the thou- 
sands of people now in asylums for the men- 
tally deranged on account of their Spiritual- 
istic practices speak foolishly and without 
knowledge. But even such extreme cases are 
not unknown, and uncritical excursions into 
Spiritualism are seldom likely to prove bene- 
ficial. 

Probably the best thing that can be said for 
the cult is that it is the antithesis of Material- 
ism. One might add that it is professedly pro- 
Christian. But, even so, I feel disposed to 
apply to it the old and scathing criticism: 
"There is much in this which is new and much 
that is true; but what is true is not new and 
what is new is not true." 

But in deprecating Spiritualism it is impor- 
tant to do so on the right grounds. Wholesale 
denial of the facts merely displays ignorance 



122 THE FOUNDATIONS OF SPIRITUALISM 

of the subject, and it would be equally ill-ad- 
vised to denounce as religiously heretical views 
which should more properly be characterized 
as scientifically unsubstantiated. 

The whole matter reduces itself to this, that 
the subject is one which should be dealt with 
exclusively by the expert and not by the ama- 
teur. If there were no Spiritualists, we, who 
are trying to study dispassionately the intri- 
cate problems concerned, would not have to 
contend with the mass of ignorant prejudice 
which the cruder excesses of the former, not 
unnaturally, excite in the minds of the public, 
who are commonly incapable of so much as 
discriminating between scientific research and 
quasi-religious propaganda. 

Spiritualism is, therefore, to be deprecated, 
not because there is anything intrinsically anti- 
Christian in the facts themselves or in the 
scientifically legitimate inferences therefrom — 
which, indeed, are too meager to provide a basis 
for hostility; but because of the scientific im- 



\ 



CONCLUSIONS 128 

maturity of the whole subject, the great diffi- 
culties connected with it, the unfortunate ten- 
dency of Spiritualists to indulge in unwarrant- 
able, and sometimes heterodox extrapolations 
from the facts, and the ever-present danger 
that their uninstructed adherents should ac- 
cept as inspired Revelation matter which is 
really no more than the product of incarnate 
subliminal activities. 



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